Volusia County schools hiring more than 460 new teachers

Thursday

Aug 14, 2014 at 5:57 PMAug 14, 2014 at 11:47 PM

By Annie Martinannie.martin@news-jrnl.com

ORMOND BEACH — The walls in Caitlin Davies’ classroom are adorned with brightly-colored letters and numbers. The desks and chairs are neatly arranged.You’d never know the 24-year-old left her home in New Jersey a week ago to teach kindergarten at Tomoka Elementary in Ormond Beach. She’s one of about 460 teachers — and counting — who are new to Volusia County this year, hired to meet the demands of growing enrollment and to replace retiring teachers. Davies was looking for a new adventure and said she found it when she came to the school district’s job fair in June. She’ll start school on Monday, along with the other teachers and students in Volusia and Flagler county public schools.“I’m very excited to get started,” Davies said. “I think I can bring a lot to this school. I’m looking forward to being a part of a new community.” Volusia County has hired about 376 teachers, and another 85 are on deck, pending the results of formalities like background checks and drug screenings. The schools will continue hiring after classes start, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Peromnia Grant said. That’s because schools don’t know exactly how many students will show up, and a few teachers wait until right before school starts to tell the district they’re not coming back. “I would love to say we have filled all of our vacancies by the first day of school, but that is never the case,” Grant said. Flagler County hired about 45 teachers for the new school year and has about 10 vacancies left to fill, according to Director of Human Resources Harriett Holiday. That’s down from previous years. The Volusia district received thousands of applications, she said, allowing the district to choose the best candidates from a large pool of prospective teachers. Grant said she felt having two job fairs this year, including one in April at Daytona State College, helped attract qualified applicants. Davies, who taught a year of preschool in New Jersey’s Somerset County, said she looks forward to using her creativity to give her 15 inquisitive youngsters a great start in school. “They’re sponges,” Davies said. “When you teach kindergarten, you’re teaching the basics for the rest of their education.”Volusia school leaders said earlier this summer they expect to add several hundred students when classes start. Last year saw 110 new students arrive. Grant said she feels the district is doing “extremely well” with its hiring to meet the need for more teachers, but other areas of the country haven’t been so lucky. Two days before the start of school, Albuquerque Public Schools were short about 200 teachers, with most of the unfilled positions in special education and elementary grades, Reuters news service reported. Certain subject areas are harder than others to fill in Volusia, too, Grant said. Reading teachers, especially at the secondary level, are particularly difficult to find. The school district struggled to hire enough teachers during the first few weeks of the last school year, partly because of higher than expected enrollment. Volusia schools ultimately hired about 400 teachers. Many of the new faces in Volusia are not new to teaching. Valerie Buchanan, who teaches second grade at Tomoka, said she attended the county’s April job fair — while she was on spring break from her job as a kindergarten teacher near Albany, N.Y. The 42-year-old said she decided to make the move because her mother lives in Ormond Beach. Her three children were eager to come to Florida, too, after they saw their new school, Seabreeze High School, is across the street from the beach. Buchanan said she received a warm reception from her new colleagues at Tomoka. As she prepared to meet her new batch of students on Thursday, Buchanan said she was focused on helping her students and their parents feel comfortable with her, too. Monday, though, will be a different experience for her. “I’ve had 15 first days, but I belonged there — I was from there,” she said.